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CRUSADE is a women's
development programme covering 100 villages just north of Chennai in Tamil
Nadu. Over the years, 8000 women have joined self-help
(micro-credit) groups, begun savings schemes and participated in training
on health, literacy, self-employment and local
democracy.
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Jothi Ramalingam founded CRUSADE (Centre for Rural Systems and Development) in 1991 to work with poor and marginalized women in his native area, Minjur, about 40 km north of Chennai. Later CRUSADE started working in neighbouring Sholavaram. It now works with a total population of about 200,000, one third of whom are from marginalized dalit communities.
Vision and Mission
CRUSADE's vision is to create a just order through non-violent means
by providing equality of opportunity to all. To this end, poor and
marginalized women are organised into self-sustaining viable self-help
groups (SHGs). Strengthening these people's organisations through capacity
building for sustainability and linking all development activities is
CRUSADE's mission.
Strategy
Women's self-help groups are formed
around the theme of savings and credit. The 12-20 women in each
group:
- elect their own leaders (the group leader is known as an animator),
- meet regularly,
- save an agreed amount and pay a membership fee on a weekly or monthly basis
- lend the pooled amount to members at an interest rate agreed by the group
- open a bank account to keep their surplus money
- and keep their own records on meetings and financial transactions
Once a new group has stabilised, CRUSADE trains its members in group management and begins to link the group to its other activities, credit for income generation, housing, literacy, health awareness, sanitation and local democracy.
The SHGs are federated at panchayat and project level, the federation has now been registered at a seperate trust - the PPI. This will support the groups and manage their communal funds. CRUSADE's role will be to organise training and new initiatives to improve the members lives. This will promote the sastainability of CRUSADE's programme. From 2009, CRUSADE is working with those to poor to have joined the SHG's.
Staff
CRUSADE's key staff
are the women village level workers, Cluster Coordinators/health
animators. These women are drawn from the communities they work with and
the majority of them were initially SHG members. They therefore have an
unrivalled knowledge of the area and the issues that SHG members face.
These workers are supported by Programme Associates who work
on income generation programmes, women's development local
democracy and health
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